Google recently announced that it’s adding hundreds of health conditions to its Knowledge Graph—the knowledge base that displays relevant information above or to the right of search results—making it easier for users to find and save the answers they need.

The update will bring the total number of health conditions in the Knowledge Graph to over 900, more than double the around 400 added in February 2015, and add downloadable PDFs for all conditions along with some general user experience tweaks. All this information is available in both desktop and mobile search results, so people can find it at home or on the go.

The Knowledge Graph expansion is of note to hospital marketers because of the way people use Google as they search for medical information. While there’s little data available on how much users favor reading information on search engine results pages over pages that rank in organic search results, we do know that users early in the patient journey start out with non-branded symptom and condition search terms. The Knowledge Graph is clearly targeted at those users, satisfying the needs of those who just want quick answers and providing a jumping-off point for those seeking more.

Another social app has dropped its signature characteristic in favor of functionality. Not long after Snapchat started letting users tap once to view messages instead of tapping and holding, Instagram rolled out an update that lets users upload portrait and landscape photos to the app.

With nearly 20 percent of all photos uploaded to Instagram having rectangular aspect ratios, the change is a welcome one for the app’s 300 million users. As hospital marketers, it gives you more flexibility with your photos and videos, whether you’re paying for ads or building your reach organically.

Topol suggests that very soon we will be using our iPhones and Androids to measure our blood pressure, pulse, check for ear infections and even perform our own EKGs. Devices are coming to market that will plug into our phones and let us perform all these tests ourselves any time we want.

If you’ve been keeping up with the social media news scene, you’ve probably noticed a flurry of updates from Facebook and Twitter in recent weeks. If you haven’t been able to find the time to read up on all of them, don’t worry—each one signals good things for your social presence.

Facebook and Twitter didn’t become the biggest names in the game by sitting around, but by listening to their users in order to deliver the best user experience around. Hospital marketers can learn a lot from these changes as they seek to strengthen their brands, outperform their competitors, and attract prospective patients on social media because each one reflects what users really want to see when they go online or open up an app.

Some of the updates are more important to understand than others, so we’ll go through them one at a time. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Google tweaks its algorithm around 600 times every year (665 times in 2012) as it attempts to deliver better search results. Most of those tweaks are unheralded changes to small variables that you probably don’t even notice, either as you search or as you monitor your SEO, but this forthcoming update, which will determine whether sites are mobile-friendly and adjust their rankings accordingly, will have a bigger (perhaps significantly so) impact than any of them, including the Panda and Penguin updates.